"Hello, Mr. Jia!" Jon Landau carefully looked at the young man in front of him several times. He couldn't help but have some doubts in his heart. Was this young man really capable of taking on a 135 million investment as Director Chen had said?
At the same time, Director Chen, who was following behind, looked at Boss Jia nervously. He only hoped that when Boss Jia rejected him, he would give him some face. At the same time, he would find a suitable reason so that he wouldn't embarrass himself too much, let alone blow his own trumpet.
"Hello, Mr. Landau!" Boss Jia also listened and shook hands with Jon Landau. Boss Jia knew this big man. In history, he was the producer of the Titanic. He didn't expect Director Chen to know him. It was really a good thing.
"The situation is like this!" Jon Landau gave a general introduction of the situation of the Titanic.
In fact, the Titanic movie was not a movie that 20th Century Fox wanted to make. In fact, 20th Century Fox had never considered making a shipwreck movie.
This movie was a movie that the former truck driver, James Cameron, had taken the initiative to make.
James Cameron used to be a truck driver. Later, after watching the Star Wars movies in the cinema, he found that truck driving was a profession with no future at all (it was lucky that he didn't find out until now). Making movies was the greatest thing.
Thus, without any professional film education, James Cameron declared himself to be a film director.
Needless to say, after a while in Hollywood, James Cameron actually became a director.
First, he made Piranha 2 and gained a certain reputation and capital.
In 1984, he raised a sum of money and wrote and directed a movie called Terminator.
This movie was certainly familiar to everyone. It made Governor Schwarzenegger popular, and it also used 6.5 million US dollars to achieve a global box office of 68 million.
After that, Cameron wrote and directed the movie Alien 2, which was also familiar to everyone. It achieved a global box office of 120 million and was nominated for seven Oscars.
Then there was "Terminator 2", the sequel that really pushed the Terminator franchise to the top. It took in 200 million in North America and 500 million worldwide.
In any case, this director's achievements were simply monstrous in Hollywood. Each film was better than the last, and each film could achieve amazing achievements. When such a director once again proposed to write and direct a new film, naturally, no film company would refuse.
In the beginning, after Cameron released the news of his new movie, the six major Hollywood film companies all turned into bootlickers, wanting to invest in Cameron's new movie.
But when Cameron took out the script for the new movie, all six major movie companies backed off.
The reason was simple. The budget for the movie was too big, and the theme was too niche.
What Cameron took out was naturally the script for the Titanic. However, at this time, the entire script was still very rough. There was only a simple outline.
When the six major film companies finished reading the script and realized that Cameron was planning to make a disaster movie about a shipwreck, they immediately backed off.
This movie was too niche. The audience in the United States never had the habit of watching movies like this. The only shipwreck movie in history also caused the investment company to lose their money. Millions of dollars of investment were only exchanged for a few hundred thousand dollars at the box office. It was a terrible loss.
More importantly, the film companies did not see what selling points a shipwreck movie could have.
There was neither the horror of the Alien series nor the fierce fighting of the Terminator series. More importantly, the movie script was actually focused on love. More than half of the shipwreck movie was actually describing love.
What was worse was that the male lead died in the end.
Logically speaking, in 1993, if you put together such a shipwreck, love, and abuse factor to make a movie, and ask for 135 million dollars of investment in one go, only a fool would believe that this movie would be popular.
In any case, if such a story was published on Qidian, it would definitely be cursed by countless Shennong. The author would then give up.
This was because the audience who liked to watch romance movies and disaster movies were not on the same channel. This kind of movie was not exciting at all.
It might not be a problem to make a literary film, but to become a commercial blockbuster with 135 million dollars of investment, this kind of theme and script was simply impossible.
In fact, the six major Hollywood film companies' thinking was not wrong. Later, Hua Xia also invested in a two-part movie called the Pacific Ocean. They invited the famous Chinese director Wu Yusen, Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and a series of international A-list movie stars. The investment was as high as 40 million dollars.
In any case, the series of settings, plot, and casting were all for the Titanic.
In the end, the two movies combined, the global box office was less than 300 million dollars … It was a total loss.
In fact, the quality of this movie was quite good. Although the plot was dragged and the special effects were insufficient, overall, the quality beat 90% of domestic movies.
However, the box office was a fiasco, and the audience was not interested. It perfectly met the expectations of all the Hollywood film companies in 1993 for the Titanic.
Therefore, the Hollywood film companies could not be blamed for looking down on others. It could only be said that Cameron was too awesome, and the dollar was too good. The most important thing was that the movie was born at the time of the explosion of computer special effects. It allowed the audience to see unprecedented special effects scenes in movies. This was the most important thing.
However, only Boss Jia knew about these things. The six major Hollywood film companies did not know about this!
Therefore, the 135 million box office and the Titanic script instantly dissuaded five of the six major film companies. Only 20th Century Fox was still hesitating.
Because the CEO of 20th Century Fox happened to be a CEO who liked to invest in special effects blockbusters, he also had a soft spot for special effects movies. Therefore, he hesitated.
On the other hand, Cameron took the opportunity to talk to 20th Century Fox about the bright future of the movie, such as how it would definitely make a lot of money. In the end, 20th Century Fox was really convinced, and both parties signed a contract to invest in the movie.
However, the problem was that once the contract was signed, 20th Century Fox regretted it. This was an investment of 135 million dollars. 20th Century Fox only had 80 million dollars on its books at that time.
Of course, if 20th Century Fox was determined to invest in the movie, it would be easy to come up with 135 million dollars even if they had to take a bank loan.
However, 20th Century Fox's board of directors insisted on opposing it. After the board of directors read the script, they felt that the movie was definitely a loss, just like the other film companies. The audience in the United States would not be interested in such a movie with special effects, romance, shipwreck, and dead male lead. They would not allow Fox to invest in the movie by borrowing money.
This gave 20th Century Fox a headache. In history, they had delayed for a whole year until Cameron's movie, "True Lies," had finished filming, but they still did not have the funds in place.
In the end, Jon Landau ran to the boss behind 20th Century Fox, who was also the president of News Corporation and the son-in-law of Hua Xia's people, Mr. Murdoch, for a sincere discussion. In the end, Murdoch nodded and approved the investment plan. He let 20th Century Fox borrow a loan to raise 135 million dollars and start the filming of "Titanic."
At this time, when the project of "Titanic" had just been established, Jon Landau was not forced to the point of looking for Murdoch. Now, he was just frantically looking for partners who were willing to invest in the movie.
This way, 20th Century Fox would not have to bear the risk alone.
However, at this time, the name of "Titanic" had spread throughout Hollywood's investment circle. When the five major film companies all rejected it, and 20th Century Fox's board of directors also rejected it, none of these investors were optimistic about the future of "Titanic." Jon Landau looked for investors in Hollywood and Wall Street, but no one was willing to invest.
Just when he was about to lose hope, he happened to see Director Chen at a business gathering and heard him bragging about the story of "Farewell My Concubine."
Especially the part where he barged into the investor's office alone and spent five hours to convince the investor who had no foresight to invest in his film "Farewell My Concubine". In the end, he achieved success in the legendary story.
Moreover, this investor was very rich, with assets of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Then, Boss Jia was targeted by Jon Landau.
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